Apart from running Puppy Linux from a full hard disk drive (H.D.D.) installation or from a LiveDVD, it is also possible to run it as a frugal installation, performed by extracting the contents of the container ISO or ZIP file to virtually any type of FAT32, NTFS, or EXT2/3/4 formatted partition.

When a frugal installation is desired it is convenient to have a LiveDVD because it can be used to install the required boot loader (either GRUB, SYSLINUX, or EXTLINUX depending on the formatting of the installation partition). Instructions are also provided below for situations when not using an optical drive.

Select a suitable U.S.B. flash drive for installing Puppy onto it (if it contains any files copy them elsewhere if required, otherwise they will be destroyed). Then proceed as follows:From within Puppy

Go to Menu > Setup > BootFlash and follow the instructions

Click on the Puppy iso file to open its contents

Copy the files vmlinuz, initrd.gz and *.sfs to the U.S.B. flash drive

From within Microsoft Windows

Format the U.S.B flash drive to FAT32 using Menu > System > GParted

When using FAT32 partitions, the bootloader syslinux, instead of GRUB, is required

Extract the contents of the Puppy iso or zip file to the partition, using e.g. 7-zip, (it is important that the original file names be kept)

Rename the file "isolinux.cfg" to "syslinux.cfg"

Delete the file "isolinux.bin"

Edit "syslinux.cfg" in a text editor: change "pmedia=cd" to "pmedia=usbflash"

Extract syslinux to a folder, e.g. C:/syslinux. Then go to C:/syslinux/win32/ and run this command to make the drive bootable (where X: is the drive letter for the target drive/partition):